Free Throws

I went back to therapy this morning.

That means I’m officially on a streak: Two weeks in a row.

I showed up early. Brought my coffee. Turned my phone off. Came prepared to do the work.

The hardest part of therapy is showing up, so I’m patting myself on the back for a great start.

A timely metaphor for this basketball-crazed time of year would be making your free throws. “You gotta make your free throws.” Every stepdad in a quarter-zip across the state of Indiana will tell you that because they know how important free throws are. One point could swing the whole game. And we want to win this game, right? So we gotta make our free throws.

Before I get started with the heft of this follow-up post on my mental health, I would like to take a second to acknowledge the wonderfully kind people who reached out to me in some way since last week’s entry. Whether you told me to be kind to myself or to simply find something nice to eat, your words have been on my mind with each passing hour, and it has made a great difference.

I have not replied to everyone, but I see your support, and I thank you. Deeply.

There are a few new developments since last week’s feelings of rock-bottom. (But aren’t there always?)

Here’s what you need to know about how things stand with my mental health journey:

Therapist

First off, pop quiz: What’s the name of my therapist that I keep forgetting? Wendy? or Daisy?

Well, it’s neither now.

After a warm and professional intake appointment with Daisy — despite my difficulties remembering her name — we made the mutual decision for me to join a different therapist within the same provider: Specifically, one who is better-equipped to help me address the challenges of working late nights in the alcohol industry.

Her name is Judy — of which I have unfortunately already created a mental mnemonic to call her “Jane.”

Brains are wonderful, let me tell you. Amazing little creatures.

I do genuinely want to thank Daisy for being professional about the hand-off process. I felt a real connection with her after our initial appointment last week, and I was looking forward to keeping that energy in my life from the moment I left her office. So I was disappointed when she called me the day after I made my post and informed me that Jane would be a better fit.

Due to the emotional nature of this otherwise-professional relationship, it was surreal to experience a brief moment of loss in a place meant to help me cope with loss. It was like a micro-breakup, in a way. My sadness could be heard in the phone call.

Alas, the point of therapy is not to hang out with friendly people and shoot the shit. It is to do critical self-work. And doing the work means finding the right partner. And after such an emotionally vulnerable first session with Daisy, I knew that it meant that Daisy was looking out for me, so I accepted the change and committed to working with Judy.

Daisy sat with me and Judy for a brief hand-off, and it felt like stepping out of one car and getting into another. Completely natural and professional. In a sense, I knew the second Daisy stepped out the door to let me and Judy continue privately, it would mark the closure of something otherwise very powerful to that point. But that’s how life goes. It’s a series of finite joys. Some are just much shorter than you expect.

I don’t feel like I have a perfect read on Judy yet, but that’s fine because I don’t feel like I have to. I’ve already felt a great deal of safety and trust in this clinic, and that’s fantastic motivation for me regardless of whom I’m working with.

But that said, Judy is very interesting to me. I read in her biography that she spent 20 years as an intelligence officer in the Air Force, which by loose stereotype automatically makes me think she’s the most deft and perceptive person on planet Earth.

And after my first meeting with her I can’t definitively say she’s not!

Most readers will already know that I’m a feature writing professor at IU Bloomington. I’m quite the enthusiast for the properly chosen word. But Judy pointed out a few specific phrases I say that caught me like a left hook to the jaw because they were otherwise imperceptible to me.

Regretfully, this is a moment of writer’s blue balls, as I don’t want to reveal these words in particular. I’m still working on them and that’s fair for me to practice in private. I do share many raw and vulnerable details here, so I’d like to keep that small portion of this thought buffet for me, if you’d please.

Otherwise, Judy and I are picking up right where I left off with Daisy. And things are looking good.

We meet again next week, and I already know I can count on her. I’ll have something good to eat beforehand.

Food

The main theme that arose from last week’s post was that I simply wasn’t feeding myself enough. I was honestly in an emaciated state for the majority of the weekend prior. Most of you who reached out after reading gave me cheerful directives to find something satisfying to eat, or to keep on snacking, which I did. It took a few days to find my appetite (again, I blame the $28 B-Dubs wing debacle), but I did make much time to nourish myself in the past week.

And I’m happy to share my progress.

On Wednesday, before my longest solo-bartending shift of my work week, I sat at Chipotle and ate an entire burrito bowl over the course of an hour. Normally, this task takes me around 30 minutes, give or take some traffic in the line from indecisive guests, but I arrived early to allow myself time to eat slowly and savor the flavor of a good meal.

After a busy lunch rush, they were out of my usual comfort protein (chicken) and my special-occasion protein (chicken al pastor), so I went with the steak. It was the only protein option left, so I committed to eating it, even though it tends to get caught in my teeth and irritate my gums.

So I sat and picked at the bowl, nursing the charred, juicy beef cubes with my tongue, and thought about how good it felt to eat something of substance. I chewed a little, and let the meat slide down my throat hole. I patiently caught up on my tabbed Wikipedia articles on my phone and patiently arranged each forkload to deliver a satisfying dose of pico de gallo with every bite.

I didn’t even stop to take my compulsory “the phone eats first” photo for random media purposes like this one. I just dived right on in. Couldn’t bother to be hungry anymore. And that delicious and relaxing burrito bowl gave me the energy I needed to work hard, both physically and mentally. I savored every second of it.

On Thursday, I reconnected with a beloved friend of 13 years at Bloomington’s “Taste of India” lunch buffet. I ate two giant plates of savory butter chicken, steaming rice, and toasted naan on a chilly day. I probably housed about eight glasses of water, too. The seasoned curry warmed my insides, and I left feeling full and hydrated. It put a pep in my step for the rest of the day.

And this weekend, I indulged in a good number of finger foods while hosting friends for an annual college basketball house party. We were living big on simple pleasures. In the span of 48 hours, I must have put away five slices of DiGiorno pepperoni pizza, six hickory-smoked Nathan’s hot dogs, eight jumbo cookies, 12 beef Jose Ole taquitos, an entire pound of strawberries, five clementines, eight snack-size bags of Frito-Lay chips, a few surprisingly rich pieces of baklava from the otherwise-questionable international market, and the majority of a Sam’s Club rotisserie chicken I shredded with my bare hands.

I ate good this weekend, y’all. Proud to have done it. I even woke up with a sour stomach on Sunday morning, but it felt oddly empowering to know it was because of too much good stuff in my stomach and not because of … well, nothing besides alcohol in my stomach.

I plan to keep on eating the good stuff as I find it. I’ll keep you posted on any delicious ventures that arise along the way. It’s springtime in Bloomington. I know the good eats are almost on the grill as I type this.

Moose Madness

The reason for all of this culinary self-love was my annual college basketball tournament house party, which I affectionately call “Moose Madness.”

I plan to write a separate post about its legacy later, but the long and short of it is that each spring, I get a lot of my favorite people in an AirBnb and just have relaxed, guilt-free fun. Most are people I typically don’t have the time to see with my service schedule, lest they come in and see me at work.

Alas, serve I do: I throw some interesting sports on the TV, play some music in a side room, stock the fridge with beer and snacks, and we all make some new memories and inside jokes along the way.

For instance, did you know Kurtis Blow’s favorite play is the alley-oop? I must have obnoxiously mentioned that 25 times this weekend, and it definitely made the Quote Board (which contains some things that can’t be repeated in polite company). We ran running gags into the ground and smiled at the carnage.

Tying this all back to mental health: this year’s Moose Madness did a wild amount of difference for my mental health heading into my second therapy session. I kicked it my best friends, online buds, long-distance homies, next-door-neighbors, former coworkers, and first-time-meeting pals across a whirlwind 48 hours. Even while I was running around throwing take-and-bake pizzas into a stranger’s oven I began to see my ability to bring joy to the table — sometimes literally.

Last week, I bemoaned that I did not offer myself the love I gave others.

But this weekend, I saw myself accepting a little bit of the love I gave others. Not a lot. But a little!

And that’s an improvement.

It’s a small change, but that’s ultimately what getting the ball in the basket looks like: Making a free throw.

And you’ve gotta make your free throws.

###

-moose

PS: round three, same time next week

Therapy

I went back to therapy today, for the first time in 6 years.

I didn’t realize how vulnerable and lost I would feel all over again.

When I made my initial appointment a few weeks ago, having noticed my new insurance plan offers $5 co-pays for in-person visits with a mental health professional, I imagined the appointment itself would be guaranteed to resemble a moment of glory. It sure felt like it when I got the fortunate and well-timed phone call informing me I had graduated off the waiting list back in February, merely a month after my initial inquiry.

Considering that I hadn’t seen a professional therapist since 2018 — the summer my mother unexpectedly died of pneumonia and my long-term romantic relationship ended just before our five-year anniversary — I immediately painted a mental image of March 18 as my de-facto day of redemption.

March would bring the sun, and the sun would bring my smile.

But on this Sunday night, I had fallen asleep without using my CPAP airway device that manages my sleep apnea. I had spilled the previous night’s hastily made dinner — microwave popcorn — all over my bed. I was sleeping, quite poorly, and noisily, with Orville Redenbacher’s crumbs all over my flannel sheets. While hazily plucking individual popped kernels from the plastic bowl using my tongue as a sort of proboscis (admit it, you’ve done it), I overturned the glossy pink dish and dumped a bunch of crunchy popcorn debris into my sleeping quarters. Which I never was awake enough to really move.

In reprehensible yet comic form, I was getting sloppy, but I had been rounding the final bend of a busy weekend of bartending that saw me make great money at an exhausting physical cost. On Friday, I rapidly assembled cocktails at a downtown video arcade late into the night, slinging and cashing up to 50 drinks an hour. On Saturday, the brewery I serve at had our busiest day yet, thanks in part to the appearance of a regional food truck specializing in fresh, sea-caught lobster — an incredible feat given the region is Indiana.

[Brief aside: The lobsters are flown from states away. People lined up an hour early, around 4 p.m., in anticipation of the food truck’s arrival. “Is it still coming?” many folks asked, still 20 minutes before the truck was scheduled to appear. It was the sort of honest spectacle a small-town newspaper would have written about with great fervor in 1915.]

In sum, come Sunday night, I was spent, and I spent the evening partying. I video-called a friend to catch up on life, and to share some marijuana together. I traded relaxation for pleasure and indulged quite hard.

At one point, I had fallen asleep listening to the R4: Ridge Racer Type 4 soundtrack while painting my fingernails (poorly) a soft powder blue. The polish was smudged and chunky, as I kept forgetting to let them dry while drinking beers at my keyboard. I didn’t do as well as I should have, even if I was merely having fun painting them again.

And consequently, I did forget to take the trash out before their Monday morning pickup, as is my house responsibility to do on Sunday nights. I had also let the dishes stack up to the point the sink could not be used, though I will cite having three (3) separate jobs where I clean dishes all night as a particularly reasonable excuse for not wanting to do them after a long day at work.

I am not a perfect person. I do not take care of myself like I should. I do not eat like I should. I do not work a normal job (or four), and I have a skewed perception of what “real life” looks like with each passing month.

Now that I’m moonlighting as a part-time party vampire, I go to bed when the sun comes up, and I go to work when the sun goes down. Mildly uncomfortable and relatively inexperienced in a surreal work schedule, I typically spend my next moments of free time seeking a fleeting joy instead of working proactively to improve my surroundings. I frequently feel alone in my struggles, as I feel like nobody sees what I’m going through, no matter how many times my friends tell me they love me or insist that I am not alone.

Hello. My name is Jeff. And I’m going to therapy.

On Monday morning, I woefully and groggily picked up my hungover pieces and washed about half of the myriad dishes stacked across my kitchen. I also took the trash out — too little, too late — but the cans are still less than half-full, so we should be okay for now.

Regardless, I am mentally massacring myself.

you’re such a bad housemate and you are an embarrassment and you’re 33 now and you’re still acting like a college kid grow up jesus christ why are you sleeping in popcorn you dumb fuck

I am very bad about negative self-talk. I call myself an idiot for just about everything I do, intentional or accidental. I give myself very little grace compared to how I treat both peers and guests at my bar. In a sense, I’m a walking hypocrite, and a nag to myself.

And yet, what I’m saying ain’t entirely wrong all the time.

I was already beating myself up on the drive over to my therapist’s office, of which I was running late on because I was low on gas, but bargained the night before to purchase fuel on the morning drive over. (Everybody hates that move.)

I had skipped breakfast, as I have made a terrible habit of skipping meals when I’m stressed. I was anxious that our first meeting was going to be met with me feeling sick and unable to “do the work,” as I have cheerfully pledged to friends in the weeks leading up to March 18.

By the time I parked the car, the responsibility of what meaningful therapy entails was becoming apparent. Here I was, at parties and social settings, acting with braggadocio that I am going to be a better person once I start getting my $5 therapy hours in, but I couldn’t seem to do anything right on the day where I was to actually start evaluating myself.

To go to therapy is to realize how far you’ve fallen.

And felt like I was dangling from a cliff on Monday morning.

I got out of my truck and immediately noticed how quiet the industrial park was. I opened the door to the nondescript strip mall office and got hit with the usual aromas of vague terror that healthcare distinctly provides: Hand sanitizer. Burnt coffee. Fabric seating. And the vague sense that somebody nearby just smoked a stale cigarette not too long ago. These scents established the very horrible recurring theme that such offices, such as dentists or doctors, provide me: traumatic vulnerability.

I took a seat opposite a woman wearing a face mask, which made me feel guilty, because I’ve generally stopped wearing them. I pulled out my outdated Google Pixel 3a to check Twitter, and felt guilty that I was already spending so much time online that day, fighting with Barstool fanboys of all things.

I felt a lump in my throat. I sighed and I gulped.

this is gonna hurt

“Jeff!?”

My new therapist is a sweet woman named Daisy. Mentally, I have been calling her “Wendy,” which makes no sense at all, and I have no reason or mnemonic to be making this mistake consistently, but the whole point here is that my brain doesn’t work as well as it should.

I make a graduated point to stand up and say her actual name. I enunciated like a language arts teacher.

“… Dai-sy?”

“Hey, nice to meet you, come on back.”

It’s hard to anticipate what your therapist’s office is going to look like, especially when the waiting room has all the energy of a dying fern. Or a fern that you can’t even tell is real.

Wendy led me through the main entry and through a narrow labyrinth of gray hallways. Somehow, it looked even more drab and claustrophobic than the Motel 6-chic lobby. We crossed other therapists leading other clients back out, turning sideways as to allow extra room and not shoulder-check each other. At one point, six of us were strafing past each other like a macabre dance.

Certainly, if I’m in a space where everyone is trying to accommodate each other, I thought in that moment, then this must certainly be a good place for me to be. I took a breath, and Wendy swung

I did it again. Her name is Daisy.

DAISY swung open her office door, revealing a warm and golden suite, plush furniture in every corner. My eyes met a soft lampshade light on the side table and my face immediately relaxed, as if I was a baby being soothed by its mother.

She told me to take a seat anywhere, and I chose the loveseat over the recliner. I don’t know what that says about me, but I’m certain it’s a litmus test for something.

She complimented my blue fingernails, and my gut instinct was to say “thank you” instead of pointing out how poorly I thought I did.

“I work with my hands professionally, so I do like to take care of them.”

I smiled, widely and sincerely, though with a tired countenance.

I laid back, in my matching blue pit-stained “Surfing Anteaters” T-shirt — my favorite shirt, which I wear to casual job interviews and parties alike — that had accompanied me to therapy like a NCAA-licensed security blanket.

Already, instantly, I had felt seen. Like someone worthy of a compliment. Because Daisy absolutely did not know me towards this point, and had no *reason* to compliment me. And yet, she saw some beauty in me on what had otherwise been a humiliating day for yours truly.

Daisy smiled back, took out her laptop, and we formally began a provider-client therapy relationship.

Now, just from me to you, as writer to reader: If I want to Do The Work as I’ve alleged I need to do, that means most of the specific conversations and details of my therapy sessions will and must remain unknown to you. I already share a great deal of raw content and damning personal implications with my writing (too much, some have said), and the idea of trying to manage my big life reset with an audience of several thousand online followers is not going to be a very smart idea in the long run.

But — I am quite compelled to compliment my therapy progress with the most reliable communication medium I’ve ever known: the written word. To be honest and raw with one’s writing is to be raw and honest with one’s thinking.

I am committed to telling myself the truth, no matter how ugly it seems going forward.

Wen- no, DAISY, yes, Daisy sat with me for close to an hour, asking me and my tired brain the most serious questions with incredible tact. Consequently, I said some things in therapy today that I’ve never said before, to anyone. And that means a lot from a guy who started his first blog post in months immediately confessing to waking up covered in popcorn, pantsless and ashamed.

I am intimidated by the weight of the boulder I have pledged to move, but I am more motivated than ever before to engage in the Sisyphean task of self-improvement. I spoke with the weakest, most wavering voice it took at some times today, but I did not tell a single lie in therapy.

And that’s what “Doing the Work” — the one recurring maxim I know every therapist to say — looks like.

I already know that I have a tremendous ally in Daisy, who has given me gentle homework.

Her first assignment, simply, is for me to eat more — “I’m not asking for three square meals every day,” she said with a loving, joking tone. “But I would love to know that you ate something before we meet again next week.”

The way she phrased it, I felt genuine interest in my well-being from someone. It sounded like something my late mother or father would have texted me. They’ve been gone for 21 combined years. And yet, someone just wanting to see me eat? That made my day.

It made me…hungry.

I told my therapist — a fan of the women’s IU basketball program — about an online phenomenon that recently tickled me deeply. I cited how the thing that’s made me laugh more than anything in the past few weeks, even going far as to saying it kept me holding on, is gentle mockery of a local Hoosiers beat reporter claiming he could accurately read the pulse of the IU fanbase at the woebegone westside Buffalo Wild Wings while a men’s basketball road game was on.

This was, of course, met with immediate online derison from folks inside and outside the IU basketball fandom. To eat corporate wings in a college town is already a tragic decision, whether you boast it up in the Big Ten or put ’em away in the Pac-10. But this restaurant is located miles from the furthestmost point of IU’s campus, and it has a notorious reputation for serving unhealthy food. It’s the only place I know of in town that has definitely had Hepatitis A outbreaks.

Over the past few weeks, as I’ve dealt with grueling work hours and the suicide of a bar colleague, I’ve found myself giggling at the audacity of the tweet. It would be like declaring Diet Shasta as the world’s finest beverage.

Considering that Daisy’s office is adjacent to this ill-fated B-Dubs, I told Daisy about the joke, and she thought it would be funny to go check it out for myself.

But, she told me: if I went, I had to eat something.

After an hour of fighting back tears and confessing some pretty stark truths to myself, I ambled over to the yellow-and-black establishment with three days worth of food debt in my stomach. I politely stood at the “seat yourself” sign and waited two minutes for a server to appear so I could ask if it was OK if I took a bar seat.

That’s my anxiety factory on full display right there. All terror, no brakes.

I took a seat in front of a wall of TVs and draft handles, next to a balding man who was picking at french fries. I scoured the menu and found nothing that interested me greatly. There were no sports on of value, unless you care greatly about Minnesota Twins spring training. I had thought this in-real-life riff of an online joke out much better in my head, that’s for sure.

But I did order an ice water. And six buffalo boneless wings. And six honey barbecue wings. With ranch and fries.

What arrived was the single least-appetizing tray of food I may have ever seen served from a licensed restaurant.

The boneless buffalo bits ended up being served with a “rub” instead of the sauce I requested, but mistakes happen, and I was committed to eating them anyway. The honey barbecue wings arrived dry, and stringy, and barely touched by sauce.

What I had imagined for weeks as a day of accomplishment and happiness had arrived as a complete flop: Hungover. Hungry. Tired. Sad. Bullshit snow after Spring Break.

And now, a hillock of food that actively disgusted me.

But I promised Daisy I would eat. I already got the sense she cared for my well-being, and I didn’t want to let her down.

I started with the dry-rub wings and took a few bites. I almost quit after the second wing. Mentally, I considered asking for a box and trying again later, but I knew that I would probably quit on them altogether if I placed them in a styrofoam to-go casket.

So I forced myself to sit at the bar and eat every single dry, fleshy, over-boiled and underwhelming wing. I carefully reconsidered all the things I copped to in my first day of Doing the Work, and The Fray’s “Cable Car (Over My Head)” — a song I loathed in high school for its sappiness — overtook the B-Dubs stereo system.

Life has an incredible ability to sort itself out into little cinematic moments. Some of them, you anticipate. Others, you get blindsided by. You didn’t buy the ticket. But you’re definitely along for the ride, whether you’re prepared to cry or not.

So I sat in the far corner of a bar I made fun of, eating food that tasted like absolute shit, listening to music I absolutely hated. It was the perfect metaphor for the struggle of going to therapy and confessing the many shortcomings about myself that await me going forward.

The restaurant was out of ketchup. A shitshow.

I fought back tears as I choked down fries.

“And eeeeeeveryone knows I’m in
Over my head,
Over my head~”

A song I constantly teased others for liking as a teenager now had me weeping in the corner as a grown-ass adult. Admittedly, my younger self probably would have called me a pussy. (I don’t use that word like that now, and that probably makes my 15-year-old self feel justified.)

But that’s what growth looks like. Sometimes it takes days, sometimes it takes years. But it definitely requires work, and acknowledging some uncomfortable truths — whether you are wrong about a popular song, needing to cut back on the vices, obsessed with teasing somebody on the internet you’ve never met, or that you feel asleep in a pile of fucking popcorn.

That’s what therapy is all about. Telling the truth.

And I greatly appreciate you listening.

-moose

###

PS: i will never spend $28 at Buffalo Wild Wings ever fucking again

Dunbar’s Bar Number

Suppose 100 people walk through your front door tonight.

Hold on, this doesn’t need to be scary. Play along like this brings you joy.

You’ve never met this centurion army of strangers before, but they’re friendly and eager to exchange pleasantries. You share a few drinks and a couple laughs, and you see them out the door with a smile and a wave.

How many of these strangers do you think you could recognize in public again, on your own volition, at any point down the line?

Alas, I’ve hit you with a trick question — each one of them has been inside your living room before, and they’re starting to take it quite personally that you can’t remember them.

This failure, as surprising as it may seem, is the truth behind many (or most) of the interactions I have had as a professional bartender.

Somewhere Over the Rainbow

My mother died five years ago today.

I’ve written so many “Dead Parent” posts at this point, between Mom and my father who died in January 2009, that the magic and poetry (perhaps novelty) of the healing process has burned out altogher.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t learn from Sherry LaFave.

I learn from her every single day of my life — even five years after her final breath.

With such a limited family background to lean on at this point, all of the specific details about my mother are kind of hazy. I don’t know where she was born, what she wanted to do for a living, how many people she dated before my father, and — perhaps more meaningfully — four-fifths of all the things she told me as a young person.

Truth be told, I assumed she would always be around for me to check in and ask about later.

Obviously, that’s not the case.

It hasn’t been for some time, and it was iffy for years before that. For each year she rooted for me in college from 75 miles away in our podunk farm town, we grew a little more distant. Even the bonding factor of losing my father a few months before my departure to college-land became old hat, and something that felt less worthy of celebration every year I spent as a student in Bloomington.

The sands in the hourglass tick by, and yet, the shape of the timepiece remains the same.

There’s just less to assign hope to as each minute passes by.

To speak candidly, my mother was a Saint among snails. As far as I know, she grew up in rural-ass nowheresville to a family with little money, and extoled the virtues of sharing and caring to anyone who wound up on the Chapman family porch that evening. Anyone who found their way into the abode was welcome for dinner; anyone who stayed for dessert was welcome to stay the night.

A few years later, Mom and the rest moved to downtown Indianapolis, and she kept the same altruistic attitude on Temple Street near Arsenal Technical High School — do unto others, love all — even until her graduation day, when a race riot saw a classmate rip Sherry’s earrings out through her earlobes minutes after getting her diploma.

You can’t pick the road you have to walk in this life. But laying down in defeat is absolutely not an option.

The story goes that my mother met my father at work late one night in 1989. Dad was the president of an east Indianapolis welding business — dropped in his own lap after his father died relatively young — and my mother was working as a for-hire maid cleaning the joint after-hours.

Somehow, whether it was at the copier or over a parking-lot cigarette, the two fatefully met. The rest is history: When I was a teenager, Dad told me he ultimately proposed to Mom shortly after meeting her for the first time. He knew, in his heart, that she was the one. In his initial confession to my young self, he said he called her and talked and hung up and redialed her and smiled and hung up and called again and talked some more and finally got around to the point.

Just two weeks after their paths crossed, Sherry LaFave (neé Chapman) had a ring on her finger.

Nearly exactly nine months after their wedding day, I was born.

While my older sister is a living testimony of their meeting, and my younger brother a living record of their later years, I am perhaps best-equipped to have experienced their time together as the living metaphor of their commitment and copulation.

Alas, despite all of our best wishes, the time goes quickly.

I was Jeffrey. Then Jeffy. Then “Jeffrey-Doo-Dah-Day.” I was the boy who laughed in public and cried in private. I was the boy who learned long division before he could tie his own shoes. I was the honor student who felt like a total impostor every step of the way. And I was the young man who found a dead father in the basement and made sure Mom was the person who knew first.

She saw me off to college, minus the figure she would need to lean on the most, and did so with the most grace one could ever hope for from a widowed family matriarch.

Move-in weeks come and diploma bestowments go, and gray finds its way into everyone’s hair.

The last I saw Mom’s hair was at her showing: she has been dead for 5 years, as of today.

Her passing came and went in a flurry — Mom texted me on a Friday night that she was having lung issues, and had checked into a hospital. She was certain, like every time before, that it would be a minor stay. By Saturday, she was on a ventilator. By Monday, she was choking. And by Wednesday, she was dead.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust — we all do what we must.

An uncanny phenomenon about relatives that have been dead for so long is that, despite your best efforts, you begin to lose the finer details about the cadences and diction in which they spoke. But they never leave you fully, especially when juxtaposed against the eternally memorable and symbolic actions in which the memories themselves were carved.

I remember my mother, Sherry LaFave, as a mother who was frequently doing her best with a limited battery. Despite battling sleep apnea, Lupus, a cigarette addiction, an eating disorder replaced by Coca-Cola classic, and a broken heart from the loss of her soulmate Mike, she was always front-and-center to accommodate me and any friends I had over in our home from a young age — just like she was raised on Temple Street.

I kept a lot of young-person truths hidden from my Mom, especially while I was away at Bloomington (“a practical Sodom and Gomorrah,” I was told by a random Bible-thumper in high school). She never knew about the cigarettes or the weed or the booze-flooded parties or anything like that. I did my best to keep it from breaking her heart, and truthfully, I can tell she did her best to keep her judgment from fracturing my spirit.

I get the sense she’d understand — after all, youth wasn’t easy for her either.

Mom always told me that it was toughest to be young: You have all of the responsibilities, and none of the experience. All of the rent due, and none of the finances in the bank. All of the acquaintances, and very few proven friends. All of the drive and little of the wisdom. A walking oxymoron, young people are.

I’m especially grateful that she saw it in me, her first son and the eponymous “Big Guy.”

I held her hand for the final time on July 26, 2018. I told her it was okay to let go and she squeezed my palm with her frail wrist one last time. I knew that neither of us wanted it to be so sudden, nor so horrifyingly sterile as to come in the intensive care unit.

But I saw her giving all of her weak 90-pound frame, and I knew I had to carry that energy, that electricity, so long as I lived, so her vivacious torch would never burn out.

And so, 1,826 days later, I unfortunately feel as I am writing about a person who is lost to time more and more with each day.

But I am confident that my eyes are seeing for her spirit, my bones are aching for her passion, and my heart is living for her soul with each and every action I take as a 33-year-old man.

She called me Scarecrow — a metaphor of our relationship embodied by her love for “The Wizard of Oz” — as I was with her, Dorothy, from the very beginning.

The yellow brick road will guide us to our fateful destination, and we continue despite (and dedicated to) those who marched with us along the way.

Mom, I love you. Thanks for everything.

I’ll always be your “Scarecrow.”

###

-moose

Write Now

Back when I worked normal human daytime hours, I published a brief-but-promising series here called “Morning Coffee.” The premise is that I would blog about personal day-to-day affairs, vis-a-vis my usual efforts of metaphorical storytelling, while consuming my daily brew.

The deal was, I had to do it every day.

Obviously, that’s not how it shook out.

Life is, at its core, a non-stop series of questions asking whether or not you will cede your time to answer it. Somewhere along the way, I lost focus and stopped writing on a daily basis. You know, the thing I went to college for. The thing that made a name for myself in my hometown. The thing that kept me alive as a teenager.

I’m serious about that last part — during the MySpace Era, I maintained a blog not unlike this one that was meant for general consumption and contemplation. I’d rush home after high school, some times, to etch out my thoughts and share them to all my angst-ridden peers in rural New Palestine. Each post averaged a few hundred to several thousand views, which meant everything for a picked-on teenager in 2007. It meant the world to hear a classmate (or a stranger) tell me they liked what I read, or even just that they saw that it was getting some traction online.

More than 15 years later, the online landscape of places to barf out one’s thoughts has clearly evolved, but writing (I hate to say “blogging”) is still the game I know best.

I just have to do it for myself.

And such as with previous writing projects I stand behind, I would like to announce a return to form, of sorts. I am committing to writing more regularly for my sake as a living, feeling, thinking human. You, of course, are welcome to read anything and everything here. I’m a proud soldier in the army of emotional vulnerability.

A few simple promises will guide our path:

1. I will write much more often than I have been doing — daily, if possible
2. Some personal information will be off-limits (work matters, names)
3. Each entry will draw upon something worth sharing. No “what I had for breakfast” posts.

What’s most likely here is that I use this writing series to spend the aftermath of my nighttime bar shifts proactively thinking about my life. You know, what normal people do with their evening.

What bugs me the most is that there was a period of time where I took my writing so seriously, my parents would ask to watch me write in real-time. At the time, it just made me feel self-conscious that I was being made into a spectacle or a talent show. But now, as an adult who has buried them both, I think they’d be very surprised to hear that I just don’t write anymore. Disappointed, perhaps.

I’ve got a gift and I’m not afraid to admit it. I need to be better to myself, and use it more often.

And such, more writing will be coming soon.

That’s it and that’s all for now. I’m just excited. Wanted you to know.

Stay tuned.

-moose

###

PS: Please offer writing prompts you’d like to see here! I take those suggestions and other reader-added thoughts in Moose’s Mailbag.

The Hug Goodbye

I didn’t even notice them at first.

After 14 hours working between two bars, I was ready to forget about graduation weekend in downtown Bloomington altogether.

But then on my nightly, ever-therapeutic 3-block walk to my truck, in which I prepare to drive home — literally putting it all behind me — I saw a mass of humanity that was not ready to go so easy into that fair night.

It’s Kilroy’s Sports. 3:30 a.m., Sunday morning, after two days of commencement ceremonies in Bloomington.

Nana’s gone to bed. Bubbe’s back at the hotel. What had been a sun-kissed, family-photo weekend for thousands in town had turned into a final night of catharsis for Hoosiers about to leave Hoosierland.

And they were drunk. Very drunk, at the Gates of Valhalla. Standing on every table, every chair, every service area, screaming along to Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” — specifically, the MAMAAAAAAAA part as I was walking by — well past the usual hour mere mortals call it a night. The bar’s double-doors were wide open, a cute-in-retrospect attempt to clue the hundreds of guests it was time to leave. Walking by, I was able to peer well-inside despite being near the sidewalk’s distant curb.

And then I took a picture.

An everyday, whip-out-the-phone, take a quick shot, maybe this is interesting thought after a long day. Something to look at on the toilet in a few weeks. I mean hell, people are standing on tables. I figured my housemates (relative homebodies) would get a kick out of some rowdy boozers getting their feet up on the furniture like a bunch of heathens.

So I got home and put it in the group chat for the housies. Fired up the Nintendo Switch, drank some beers of my own, and crawled onto my mattress after a milestone work weekend put to bed itself.

The next afternoon, after a long night of sleep, I took a second look at the picture.

I didn’t notice the two guys hugging in the middle of all the chaos.

But it stood out to me as something poignant, something raw and vulnerable.

Everyone in Kilroy’s Sports was putting on a brave face, staring at the explicit end of their college experiences. When they went home that night, it meant college — nay, Indiana University — was finally over. It meant the genesis of job-hunting or office gigs or scrambling for something from the parents’ new “guest room.”

So rage, rage against the dying of the light, they did.

And yet, with all of the singing and shouting and chugging and shooting and bumping and grinding and sweating and vibing going on in the room, these two anonymous figures were, in my eyes, finally acknowledging it all, and what it meant for their friendship.

And celebrating the moment before The Great Unknown with one final hug.

These guys, it seems, are really going to miss each other.

Let me be clear: I do not know these guys. I don’t know anyone in this photo (well, there’s one familiar face way in back, but that’s not important). These two friends might not be students. They might not even be close friends! But their body language evoked something that represents the metaphor of turning a page and acknowledging the rest of the book up to that point was now history. Over. Done. Goodbye. Toast. Never coming back.

But nights like these are forever.

Something about this image evoked something in me of my own college experience. Fittingly enough, the day had marked the 10-year anniversary of my own IU graduation — a day I will describe to God Himself as a horrible affair.

Dad had been gone for 4 years. Mom’s health was ailing. Brother and sister had to work. I was a poor student hopping between jobs myself. That Saturday in 2013, I woke up terribly hungover and wearily marched into Assembly Hall with my hot, humid fart-gown. Mom was somewhere in the alcoves, as the steep stairs of the building where Dad used to play were too much for her feeble legs to navigate. My flip phone (yes, a flip phone) was too weak to take a good picture, and Mom couldn’t figure out how to work the camera on her phone.

So there’s not really any pictures of my IU graduation. There wasn’t a party either — I finally found Mom outside IU’s cathedral of basketball after the whole shebang and we went back to my dingy, 1970’s apartment (“A Distinct Management Property”) and ate what I had in the fridge, which was cold chicken sandwiches made from Kroger deli meat and shredded cheddar cheese.

We didn’t get our picture taken together because there was nobody else to take the picture. She needed to drive home before it got too dark, and that was that. I went to bed after a few drinks on the couch. Nothing special.

So, suffice to say, I didn’t get a real elegant finish to my college career. There was no pageantry. No reserved-months-in-advance table at Uptown or Farm.

No pomp, either. Just circumstance.

This memory is kind of traumatic in retrospect. And I say it all as a juxtaposition to this candid photograph, which seemingly illustrates the graduation experience I never got.

Here I am, 10 years later. Same town. Making drinks for the new graduates and their proud families. Those who had been my equal peers are now those I serve with a sense of duty.

Honestly, there’s no resentment. I’m happy for them. I’ve learned to look past the wealth and status that comes with an all-smiles college experience and remember these are real people with real families. And real emotions.

And hugs that seemingly last forever.

I tweeted this same picture, more or less, as what we called a “gee-whizzer” in the newspaper industry. Nothing of particular value, but something that makes you think or feel. Something uncommon that stays with you.

There’s something about this embrace that I’m sure we’ve all been lucky to experience at one point in our lives. The hug that comes at a time of closure and farewell. The Hug Goodbye. I described it on the bird site as the “I don’t want to cry so I’m going to press my eyes into your shoulder and hope I don’t start bawling” hug. But whatever you may call it, pretty much everyone has had a hug this meaningful before.

Apparently, I’m not the only one who felt this way. The original picture (where I used Twitter stickers to cover up a few faces, for privacy’s sake) made the rounds across IU’s wide online alumni network and got people in their feels again.

In the quote tweets, one alumnus said “grad night at Sports was probably the most wholesome night I’ve ever had at a bar in my entire life.” Another said that “places in Bloomington still make me emotional, how you change and they change, but part of the places and a part of you stay forever the same, frozen in time.” Another remembered giving his late brother this same sort of hug.

A few recent graduates (of 2020 and 2021) saw in this photo a lamentation what they never got, a final send-off cancelled by Covid.

As for the picture composition itself, a friend of mine described it as like a Renaissance painting. It made an acquaintance state he was glad to be Straight Edge. A random person remarked “I know it smell like earring backs in there,” which, truthfully speaking, yeah.

However it made people feel, it certainly did just that.

I’m really loath these days to share pictures of strangers on the internet. I took more efforts with this post to blur out any faces that might be easy to recognize. But it was the seeming anonymity, the symmetrical head-in-shoulder hug that covers crying eyes, and the plain-colored clothes that anyone can wear, that I think made this so relatable.

We don’t know these guys — we are these guys. Anyone you love, have loved, will ever love, is these guys.

There’s part of me that’s curious to know who they are, but ultimately? I think I’m better off not learning. After 24 hours and thousands of likes on Instagram (you’re welcome, Barstool IU), the subjects in this picture haven’t spoken up. No retweets or replies with a “hey, it’s so-and-so!” either. I haven’t heard anything yet, at least.

And I’m fine with that. It has the same mystique, in a sense, of iconic photographs like the “high-rise lunch” or “the V-J Day kiss” or “raising the flag at Iwo Jima.” We don’t have to know who the subject is to appreciate the evident human emotion on display, even if it was just two bros hugging it out after a long night (and day) of drinking.

This photograph was a mere passing glimpse into a bar’s pulsing maw, and it got people talking about friends and family they miss. These hugging strangers, in the middle of the chaos, holding each other for dear life, represent a friendship realized and finalized. A hug we’ve all regrettably, lovingly, weepingly had. A goodbye we’ve all had to speak.

And to think, I didn’t even notice them at first.

###

-moose

TripAdvisor: Places to Grieve in Downtown Indianapolis

In the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, you may confront your darkest hours.

There are no more presents to open. The leftovers won’t keep much longer.

Uncle George keeps forgetting he left his government-issued walking cane at your house, and now you’re responsible for the existential fate of his aluminum hook.

There’s merely time to wait. And think. And worry – about everything.

The shadows grow darker. The winter grips colder than ever. 

“2023?,” you ask yourself every few hours while pacing your bedroom. “How much more of this do I have? I didn’t really sign up for all that with the Big Man, did I?” 

Your drawers become cluttered. The laundry pile has a sentient personality.

But what about us avid travelers who simply cannot stand to leave the dread of modern life at home?

Thankfully, our experts at TripAdvisor have compiled a (growing!) shortlist of places and spaces where the fugue state is all the rage.

We’re tackling this ennui trend with Indianapolis, the bleary community that made Kurt Vonnegut so singularly fucked up as to draw buttholes in his finest books.

Our resident south-central Hoosier and Indy-area native Moose recently spent some time in the “Circle City” to attend to personal matters.

While there, he crafted us some thoughtful reviews on the small businesses and liminal moments around Indianapolis that made all the difference while his brain screamed non-stop for a few days.

A Short Post on Reaching 32 Years of Age

It certainly wasn’t the way we drew it up, but I wouldn’t change a goddamn thing.

###

-moose

Moose on the Juice, Part 2

“You set ’em up, and I’ll knock ’em back, Lloyd, one-by-one.”

Like a bowling ball to a set of freshly-crowned pins, I have now knocked down 10 daily complimentary beverages from the Circle K corporation, as part of my larger (more modest, cost-efficient) “Moose on the Juice” journey to sample as many different drinks as I can during a summer of much personal change.

Life has many doors, but alas, a tasty beverage is waiting behind each one.

Here’s a brief rundown of the refreshments I’ve claimed from the “Sip and Save” program in the past 10 days:

_{please don’t ask me how many things I keep track of in spreadsheets nobody else sees}

The Great Shirley Temple Excursion

On Days 1 and 10 of the experiment, I’ve gone to my old standby when drinking my choice of soft beverages: the “Shirley Temple,” as named after the child movie star (who notably was not a fan of the drink).

_{A portrait of the artist as an aging millennial dipshit.}

I used to drink a lot of Shirley Temples as a late teenager when I went out to dinner with my Dad, who would always order a Budweiser in a bottle at our beloved “Round the Corner Pub” in New Palestine.

My decision to order Shirley Temples, which felt like adult cocktails in a way, was, in a sense, our own way to sit “at a bar” together, even though I was only 18 when he passed away. Shirley Temples were common choices from me in those days where I was starting to feel like an adult for the first time, in Dad’s presence, and hoping to become my own adult before too long. I was editor of the school magazine, I was getting more attention from cute girls, and big things were awaiting me in college at Indiana University. Each sip of Shirley tasted like another step forward to a great future awaiting me somewhere, someday soon.

Anyways, that was 13 years ago, and now I’m blogging about sodas.

As I mentioned in our first post together, the traditional Shirley Temple beverage was originally served in ginger ale or club soda, but more commonly Sprite today, with a splash of cherry grenadine syrup for flavor. But since three of these options are not available at my Circle K, I make do with Sprite and a good dose of Mountain Dew Code Red.

Either way, I think an appealing aspect of these Franken-beverages is that you get all that flavor with very little caffeine, comparatively speaking, even with a Code Red back, because of the caffeine-free Sprite.

There was some New York Times article a week or two back declaring the “dirty” Shirley Temple 2022’s “drink of the summer,” and I really don’t know what to make of writing like that. Of course, it’s passing culture analysis, but I feel like there has to be some sort of official board or doctorate committee that makes such a bold claim.

Perhaps it hits on a different, more existential aspect of the media industry to me: even for one of the most prestigious news outlets in the world, imagine writing about soda pop when some of your colleagues are getting shot at in war zones or bearing witness to a literal insurrection. Nothing to answer or explain right now. I just sit with that personally as a guy who went to journalism school with a lot of talented folks, but prefers to use his powers to examine microscopic salts by the grain in the name of documenting a beach of low-culture gas station products while they’re off winning Pulitzers and saving democracy and shit.

It’s not an insecurity thing so much as it kinda makes me feel like a sort of media clown.

But I’m a damn good clown. Honk!

Anyways, Shirley Temples are the drink I’ve had the most thus far during this “Moose on the Juice” quest — at 2, since I’m not trying to do repeats — and they might very well prove to be my own “drink of the summer.” We’ll see how many I have, as well as if I want to turn a few into Dirty Shirleys.

Comfort Colas

Generally speaking, I prefer more exotic and fruity soft drinks (Sprite, Mountain Dew variants, Lemonade) compared to caramel-based colas (Coke, Pepsi, Dr. Pepper) that tend to share the soda market in equal regard. I’m more likely to enjoy something that tastes like tropical candy instead of savory chocolate.

That said, not every day can be the same (nor should it be), so I took to a few traditional name-brand colas as reliable standbys when I was either feeling tired because of real-life situations or simply unimpressed by the options a certain Circle K location (looking at you, South Walnut Street) had offered me on any given day.

I leaned on Coca-Cola classic, Diet Coke, Cherry Coke, and Big Red cream soda on these days, which usually included some degree of self-care. Trying to review such prominent, familiar sodas (Big Red perhaps being a minor celebrity in this entourage) seems like a futile task. How does one review something so commonplace, like pepperoni pizza or chocolate ice cream?

Well, you get someone else to do it.

In the words of pop artist and yinzer Andy Warhol:

“You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it.”

So yeah. You already know they’re good.

‘Frosters’

I understand that each convenience store chain needs their own version of a frozen drink, something that avoids the copyrights of the eponymous “Slushee,” “Slurpee,” and “ICEE” brands, but Circle K’s name brand of “Frosters” leaves much to be desired in the name. Imagine a Wendy’s Frosty, but less fun!

That said, I’m out to do my due diligence in sampling, so I’m pleased to report back on two Froster experiences from separate Circle K locations in town:

1. “Orange Creme”

I made a venture to the Kirkwood Avenue Circle K to try their rumored slushy machine as my first, after a hot tip from my home location. One might assume (I did, and I’m an idiot) that the “Orange Creme” concoction would taste like the familiar “creamsicle” (aka Dreamsicle) frozen pop, which bears a healthy dose of vanilla to counteract a relatively mild but robust orange fruit flavor.

Nope. The Orange Creme slushy is pure tartness, very closely akin to the classic (but way different) orange “Push Pop” served in elementary school cafeterias and budget-saavy birthday parties all across childhood. Which isn’t a bad thing! It’s just way off from what my palate was expecting. Like expecting a sip of coffee and getting toothpaste. Just a major surprise.

(I drank the entire thing happily, once I knew what to expect.)

2. Blue Razz / Laffy Taffy / Mountain Dew

The next day, I went to a different Circle K, one on 17th Street where I once got a phone call a few years back telling me I didn’t get a coveted marketing job downtown, and popped inside to see what they had to offer me in terms of refreshments and memory overwriting.

On tap for slushies, they had Blue Raspberry, “tropical” Laffy Taffy, Mountain Dew, and Coca-Cola (out of order). So I got the former three options together as a bastard-sort of flavor mix, which worked extremely well!

_Glorious.

Almost instantly, the three foamy flavors (at three separate consistencies) mushed together to form a miasma of taste, the byproduct aroma and flavor seeming identical to a freshly opened packet of gummy bears. I strongly preferred this to the Orange Creme option, if only because I knew (to some degree) more what I was getting into. I drank it on a humid, overcast day and watched NASCAR action in my room.

That said, I’d happily drink either slushy again! Circle K slushee sizes (I will not say “Froster”) are generous as well, so no matter what you’re getting, there’s a least a great chance you’ll get your money’s worth. It could be flavorless crushed ice, and you’d still be getting a bargain.

‘Purple Thunder’

Right now, Circle K is big on promoting a special blend of Mountain Dew unique to their chain called “Purple Thunder.” Not to be confused with some stupid nickname your father would assign himself while playing pickup basketball in the driveway, Purple Thunder is themed like a big, obnoxious motorcycle you’d see in a hot rod magazine, and flavored like “berry plum” with a hint of gumdrop spice.

^{This image will double as my publicity photo in my upcoming career as a finger model.}

True to form, it’s not available on tap at my home store — another “out of order” flavor — so I had to track it down at the campus Circle K location.

Frankly speaking, it looks like lean, or “Purple Drank,” the unmistakable party drug/drink of codeine, cough syrup, and cola. Add a few Jolly Ranchers and any discerning staff member might hide the remaining cough syrup in the C-store.

Generally speaking, I love all of the variants of Mountain Dew (Code Red cherry, Livewire orange, Major Melon watermelon, Spark raspberry lemonade, and more), and Purple Thunder fits right in with this family of enjoyable sips. It tastes like the spicy end of discount purple jellybeans, but they’re just fine in my book. Plum isn’t a flavor I’m used to experiencing in soda, so once you get past the inevitable Christmas season flashback associations, it’s pretty good! And I’ll probably get Purple Thunder again.

What’s Next?

There are still three weeks to go in the “Moose on the Juice” sip-and-save tasting journey, and I hope to cover the following topics in the coming 21 days:

• Coffee selections, both hot and iced, since they are also included in the deal
• The apparent big plans awaiting my local Circle K (gasp!)
• Visiting every Circle K store in town (I have now visited 4 of 7 — “home, campus, Kirkwood and 17th street”), plus the two locations in nearby Ellettsville
• Finding the location with the most working drink faucets, then trying all of them at once (Day 31)

Want me to try something in particular? Got a question or special recipe to offer? Maybe just some random thoughts? Drop a line in the Moose Mailbag and I’ll write back here in a future post. 🙂

###

-moose

PS: Like what you’re reading? Want to buy me a Polar Pop? Feel free to donate $1.19 (or whatever) to this career writer who wants to spread a little joy to this sick puppy of an Earth while he’s between jobs. Totally optional. I spent $120 yesterday to renew my WordPress Premium so I can provide this content free of charge for the next year. Writing is worth that to me. 🙂 I hope you enjoyed the read.

Venmo | PayPal | WordPress

Patrons of the Juice:

Jack McGrew, Jim Banta

Moose on the Juice (Part 1)

Here’s an enlightening message that has stuck with me since my first days in a journalism classroom:

“If you see it, it’s a good story. If you take notes, it’s journalism.“

Anyway, that tidbit from Laura Moore’s “Intro to Journalism” high school class circa 2006 is prologue for my latest bullshit: exploiting even more benign promotions from corporations who don’t know I exist.

I’m planning to sample all the Polar Pops from Circle K over the next month, and none of you motherfuckers can stop me! You’ll never take me alive, pigs!

I’ve been on the hunt for quality refreshment that won’t break the bank now that summer has returned. I got a fresh case of CPAP dry mouth (in addition to the “usual” dry mouth), and my arm-sweat “pitters” are certainly not quitters.